I played a game earlier where I was with a gold player in my game. I’m em4, not even 0lp. This gold player wasn’t a smurf, 46 games this season 60% wr. Doing decently well within gold, but still a gold player. Of course, being a gold player, they get hard stomped by emerald players. Not fun for anyone.

Now there are 3 options whenever a gold and emerald player are matched together:

• The gold player is a legitimate gold player. They are utterly outclassed by no fault of their own - they’re simply in an elo higher than their own
• The gold player is a smurf. Then this is a problem by itself as im sure nobody besides the smurf wants them to be in that game
• The emerald player’s mmr is so low that it’s reasonable to pair them with gold players. In this case, they should be demoted to plat. Honestly, im probably in this camp. I’m realistic enough to believe that if my mmr is legitimately low enough to be paired with gold players, im probably in a position to need to climb back up to emerald through plat. Would help fix my mmr too.

What’s the reason that this can happen? I get that their mmr can be equal, but then surely one of them shouldn’t be the rank they are. If people could only be paired with the league above or below them, it would be much harder for smurfs to ruin mid-elo (plat/em) games. Just a thought, don’t mean to rant.